The Helmholtz Zentrum München is a research institution of the Federal Government and the State of Bavaria within the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres, the largest scientific organisation in Germany.

The Research focus of the HelmholtzZentrum München is environmental health. The Center places emphasis on excellent basic research, internationally used experimental platforms and clinical cooperation groups, as well as centers for translational medicine, in collaboration with the Munich universities and with other leading institutions, both national and international. The research projects of the Helmholtz Zentrum München are focussed on 4 complementary thematic fields:

The Institute of Epidemiology at the HMGU is contributing to the U.S. EPA Particle Centre at Rochester University, NY (funded from 1999 - 2010), where the specific focus is on the health effects of ambient UFP. HMGU holds long standing collaborations both with the Harvard University Programme on Environmental Epidemiology as well as U.S. EPA research labs at Chapel Hill, NC, USA.